It’s the Time To Give.   The Fed’s Giving You a Lower Interest Rate!

The Fed Makes The Announcement
For its last move in an action-filled year, the Federal Reserve announced it will begin buying its pledged $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities next month.
Good News For Mortgage Shoppers!
For home buyers and mortgage rate shoppers, the timing couldn’t be […]

Changing Times

For the first time in over a year, the sales of “used homes” fell below the
5-million unit trendline, helping to push the total home inventory higher by 0.1 percent nationwide.
Based on the rate at which homes are selling nationwide, it would take 11.2 months for the existing housing supply to be exhausted.  That’s a […]

One Half of a Million Jobs
Yes, in November the US lost 533,000 jobs.  This was the largest increase of unemployment since 1973.  Probably not a huge shocker overall, and that’s likely why mortgage rates didn’t move a whole lot on Friday.  See, normally the uglier the news, the better mortgage rates do.  However, the markets […]

The monkey’s out of the bottle.  Announced about 20 minutes ago, the ‘draft’ version of the financial ‘bailout’ deal has been released.I’ve spent my Sunday at home watching C-SPAN waiting for the announcement and seeing what everyone had to say about it.  It’s been interesting to say the least.
Here’s the quick and dirty summary of […]

Is This a Hail Mary?
It was brought to my attention this afternoon that Down Payment Assistance is going for the hail mary pass.  The Washington Post wrote up a big story on Down Payment Assistance (DPA) and it appeared this morning.  The story itself is worth taking a quick look at, and you can see […]

Yes, it’s true.  No, it shouldn’t be a surprise.
Each week, we see the housing stats and we’ve consistently seen the decline. Please, don’t let this surprise you.
Interestingly enough though, there is good and bad news with the statistics that the Des Moines Register reported last week with this report.

Good News First:  The average home sales […]

How Will the Big Mortgage Bailout Impact Iowa?
In case you missed it, on Monday KCCI had a great story to show Iowans how the recent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac story impacts them directly.  Todd Magel (KCCI Reporter) contacted me to ask my opinions on the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout.
See the story here:

KCCI […]

Fannie and Freddie, Seized.

It’s official.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now under control by the US Government.  Formally a individually operated (but government sponsored) Fannie and Freddie got a little over their heads.  After showing enormous losses and unable to raise enough capital to keep their heads above water, the tax payers are going […]

I hate it when a bank decides to exit the mortgage business.  It’s no fun for many people, real people.
The News
Announced early this morning (Via Wall Street Journal E-mail Alert), GMAC announced they’d be cutting around 5,000 jobs due to mounting concerns of their mortgage division.  They literally cut 60% of their work force in […]

Breaking The News
We all know the housing market is down.  Not shocking, I know.  You have to recognize the important part of living in Des Moines, we haven’t seen near the declines the rest of the country.  There was a recent article in the Des Moines Register that clearly illustrated what has happened recently versus […]